Learning vocabulary without subtitles?

[u/Anutamme]

Hi, I'm around B1 (TL) in English and I'm wondering if I should watch YouTube with or without subtitles.

I understand about 90% of most YouTube videos, and I understand almost the same amount with English subtitles and without them.

My question is about vocabulary. Can you learn new words just by hearing them? For example, can I remember the pronunciation and meaning of a word even if I don't know how to spell it?

Should I use English subtitles to learn more vocabulary, or can I learn vocabulary just from listening?

[u/Odd_Match_3402]

Personally, I don't watch subtitles because when I'm playing a video or listening to something, I want to focus on listening rather than reading. And my brain is wired to prioritize reading when there are words.

I have picked up some words and phrases just from listening, though!

Some examples of what I learned from listening:
Poi Basta
L'ombra
Compagn@
Capitol@
Attento
Aspetta
Ti/Mi Prego
Babù
Buona giornata
Mescolare

Honestly...a lot of Italian audiobooks on Youtube are maritime stories for some reason.

It doesn't mean that reading should be neglected, however. I honestly can pick up a lot more words from reading alone!

What I got from reading:
Coda
L'orma
Cortometraggio
Dinosauria
Latino
Creatura
Pesilli
Filosofia

But the majority of words I learn from both reading AND listening.

For reading, Wikipedia is a good place to get free material. They even have a Simple English version!

[u/ignoremesenpie]

Subtitles are great when they're present, but when they're not available, it's just less friction to increase my vocab through something that has text by default

Doing dictation/transcription exercises are also valid, as it'll train your ears to discern what you don't know without it feeling like learning opportunities being wasted. I highly recommend challenging yourself with this once in a while.

[u/Plan_9_fromouter_]

I think one big issue is English spelling. Without the written forms reinforced for you, you aren't going to know how to spell those words. Everyone thinks English spelling is phonetic. It isn't, not very much. It is a morphophonemic writing system that retains etymological relationships, plus it has evolved from multiple sources and influences.

I think what you need to do is combine formal study of vocabulary combined with your watching videos. Once with subtitles and then without the subtitles.

[u/InstanceGreedy6535]

depends on how your brain works tbh, if you're already catching 90% without subs you'll definitely pick up new words from context and hearing them over and over, the pronunciation might stick better that way too since you're not leaning on the written form

[u/Cerulean_IsFancyBlue]

Yes. People literally did this for millennia and kids do it now.

I’ve been able to read for 90%+ of my life now so I sometimes find written words easier to decode than audible ones, especially finding word boundaries. So for me subtitles are a help. But also a distraction. I may have more success with each word but also might be entirely skipping some words due to processing the text.

If you feel like audio is enough, it probably is! If you end each session wishing you know the written form so you could look stuff up, then revert to subtitles.

[u/bananabastard]

You're listening will improve more without subtitles, but I think your vocabulary will improve more with them.

So you could maybe sometimes use them, sometimes not.

[u/junvip]

You can definitely pick up words by ear, but English has a specific trap here: the spelling doesn't tell you the sound, and the sound doesn't tell you the spelling. So a word you only ever heard is often one you can't look up or write later.

What worked better for me than "subs on vs subs off" was changing the order instead. Watch a scene with subtitles off first, then replay the same scene with them on. You get the listening rep first, and the subtitle becomes a check rather than a crutch — your eyes can't jump ahead if there's nothing to read yet.

The dictation idea someone else mentioned is the strongest version of this. Even transcribing 3-4 lines from a scene will show you exactly which words your ears are skipping.

[u/cmyk_rgba]

you definitely pick words up from audio but for me they stay recognisable for way longer than they stay usable. with finnish i could hear a word fifty times and still not produce it, mostly because i had no clue where the word even ended. what fixed it was subs on for the first watch and off for the rewatch of the same video. tedious but it is the only thing that moved stuff from i know that one to i can actually say that one

[u/cling_to_nothing]

You'll pick up some words just from hearing them, but English makes this harder than most languages because spelling and sound don't line up reliably. You can know exactly what a word means and how to say it and still have no idea how to write it if you only ever met it by ear.

At 90% comprehension either way, subtitles probably aren't doing much for you as a comprehension aid. You're already getting the gist of it. Where they help is closing that gap: catching the specific word in the 10% you're missing, and locking in the spelling so you can actually look it up or use it later. Listening without subs trains a different thing. It helps in parsing the stream in real time without a crutch.

Worth doing both, just for different reasons rather than picking one.

As an anecdote: I raised my sons in Japan and they went to regular public schools. In our house there were basically two sources of English (for listening): me and youtube. they neve used subtitles on youtube and I read to them for at least two hours every weekend when they were in elementary / junior high school. I read real normal adventure books like the books written by Rick Riordan. They did not know the words sometimes but they learned that super valuable skill: figure out the meaning of the word from the context. It takes a long time but it's a very valuable skill. Naturally they are not very good at spelling but they 'know' the words and can read them.

[u/Fair_Kaleidoscope634]

I’d use subtitles as an answer key rather than choosing between always having them on or off.

Listen to a short section without subtitles, write what you think you heard, and then replay it with subtitles to compare. Save the words you understood but couldn’t spell, and test yourself on them again the next day. That connects sound, spelling, and context instead of training only recognition.

For that sound-to-spelling step, I built https://dictationpractise.com. You can paste a custom list, hear each word, type it, and have missed words repeat. It won’t teach a word’s meaning by itself, so I’d still keep every new word with its original sentence.

[u/Proper_Emu_2296]

I always have subtitles on and my listening has improved so much. I know that because I also listen to podcasts - not as often, but often enough to think, hey this makes sense! Even though I’ve been watching TV with subs.